The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

We went to the hospital, which was shocking: a crying baby in a big bed,
with two broken legs in casts. We found out that the baby’s mother was
badly injured. She said what happened is like a dream now: when it happened,
she was on the balcony, watching the planes coming in, with
the baby in her arms. Suddenly she had the impression that she was
flying, with the baby in her arms, like on the moon, weightless, before
falling injured to the ground.
In 1982 came the invasion of Lebanon and the surroundings of Beirut. I
stayed in Beirut during the entire war, from the beginning. My sister’s
and my choice was to volunteer in hospitals and refugee camps, which
we told my father. As we were members of the Lebanese Democratic
Youth Organization, we went to their centre, and signed up. The first
day we still slept at home, but after that, we lived and slept at the centre.
We were the only girls there – between all the boys. The girls came in
during the day and went home at night – except my sisters and me. I
worked in the ambulance, hospitals, and with the refugees. The first
two weeks of war we only slept two or three hours a day, but then I had
strong migraine attacks, and the doctors told me to go home and sleep.
This was my first direct war experience.
At the same time we were living our lives. The football World Cup was
underway, and we gathered whenever we could to watch the matches,
on TVs running off car batteries. And we celebrated our birthdays.
The first time I saw the word “peace” written was in Moscow in 1976,
where we lived together with my father for one year. He had managed
to include me and my younger sister in a children’s delegation of Palestinians.
In the Soviet Union, the word “mir” (peace) was written every -
where: “mir” for children and “mir” for everybody”. The opening of the
international camp took place in Moscow; the camp itself took place
near the Black Sea, which had already under Lenin been established as
an area of peace for the children of the world. In the camp, children from
all continents participated, of course including from all countries of the
USSR. But I don’t remember whether any Israeli young people participated.
The year we went to the camp, they decided to have short speeches
by Palestinian and Vietnamese children. I didn’t speak Russian, and they
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